U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her country is offering to help raise $100 billion a year for the next decade to help the most vulnerable nations cope with a warming planet.Last time I heard, the US had anything but a $100 billion budgetary surplus. If anything, it looked more like a ~ $1 trillion deficit, with the total debt exceeding $12,000,000,000,000. Maybe, in the eyes of Hillary Clinton and her colleagues, an extra $100B in deficit, and an extra trillion on top of the mammoth public debt won't make much of a difference. But I hope that voters have a different opinion on that, when they go to the polls next November (and then - in 2012).
Meanwhile, according to the National Post, fewer people consider global warming among their chief concerns, both in the US (18% as opposed to 26% last year) and in Canada - here, the number is 26%, down from 34% last year.
No wonder that 73% of Canadians favour delay on signing Copenhagen agreement. While the number of those realistic folks that oppose the deal under any circumstances is quite low (only 14%, compared to 25% that want to sign the deal no matter what,) majority of Canadians (51%) would rather put the global treaty on hold either until it's certain that our economy can handle it or until all those theories that attribute "global warming" to human activities are proven beyond reasonable doubt.
The latter would be quite a difficult task, considering that this winter starts with record snowfalls and record cold temperatures. Hopefully, it's cold enough in Copenhagen to get the global climate tax and wealth transfer treaty frozen.
2 comments:
You raise a good point. That $100B/yr could help finance their wars.
But I wouldn't worry. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of U.S. foreign aid money wound up in the pockets of American contractors anyway. Maybe it would help to think of it as a bailout or stimulus or TARP or something.
And it looks like Canada might align our policies with theirs, according to the media. Personally I'd rather we decide for ourselves what our policies should be.
This is an interesting combination of foreign policy and environmental policy. How would the money be divided among the nations? Will North Korea get its fair share?
And while I'm at it, if $100B/yr were spent either in the USA or the 3rd world, where might that achieve a greater reduction in greenhouse gases? Isn't the US one of the largest GG producers per capita?
Oh, sure, if those war-mongering americans don't throw their money into a bottomless pit otherwise known as foreign "aid", they'll use it to finance their wars. Yeah, right! Especially if it's the money none of them has...
Why do you think they can't just scrap this eco-fraud and keep the money to themselves, so they don't add an extra trillion to their debt over the next decade and so that the next generation of Americans doesn't have to pay an extra $50B-$70B annually in interest payments? Wouldn't that be a reasonable solution?
As for the greenhouse gases - first of all there must be a proof that global warming (or global climate change) actually exists, that it's caused by human activities, not by the sun. Also, there must be a proof that CO2 is actually a pollutant (what you breathe out - is also a "greenhouse gas") and that having more than 0.04% of CO2 in the atmosphere could be dangerous for the planet. And this time it must be a real proof for a change, not a half-ass work of a C student who looks for the answer first and then twists the solution so it matches the answer.
Up until the man-made climate change theory is proven beyond reasonable doubt, we'd rather address water and air pollution here in Canada, so that we have cleaner water in our rivers and fewer smog days in our cities. Not to mention that it will cost a lot less than all those "cap and trade" and "carbon credit" scams.
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